Strike over, trash pickup resumes

A lot of Lorain County neighborhoods should begin looking cleaner and smelling better as garbage pickup gets back to normal after the end of a weeklong strike by Republic Services workers.

“I’m happy to say we’re back to work,” Martin Jay, business representative for Teamsters Local 20, said late Saturday afternoon.

The local represents nearly 200 workers at Republic Waste’s Lorain County operations based in Carlisle Township.

Union workers began returning to the job Saturday morning, Jay said.

“Some of our guys are back on the trucks, and the company already had its blue crew scheduled to work today,” Jay said.

The “blue crew” is comprised of non-union workers who have been brought into the area from outside Ohio to drive garbage trucks during the strike, Jay said.

“Any of our guys who wanted to go in today or Sunday could,” Jay said Saturday. “We had a good number who stepped up to volunteer,” Jay said. “The company wasn’t forcing employees to come back on the weekend.”

All drivers are expected to be “back on their trucks and on their routes come Monday,” Jay said.

Local Teamsters struck last week in support of Teamsters Local 377 in the Youngstown area whose members have been without a contract with Republic Waste since Oct. 31.

The Mahoning County local struck in March over alleged unfair labor practices and a proposal to change the way in which pensions are handled.

Local 20 workers staged a one-day sympathy strike April 1 in support of Local 377.

The end of the strike followed what Jay termed a good-faith effort by Local 20 members to return to work as Republic committed to continue talks to reach an agreement.

“We anticipate the company and union will be able to work through issues in the next couple of months,” Jay said.

He declined to discuss specifics of the negotiations.

“It’s been a long week,” Dave Kidder, Republic Waste area marketing director, said Saturday night.

Kidder confirmed that workers began returning Saturday.

“Some guys showed up today, while other guys are coming in tomorrow (Sunday)” to resume residential and commercial-industrial trash pickup, Kidder said.

Asked which cities would see a resumption of service first, Kidder said “where the piles are highest. We’re trying to put water on the fire all over the place. We have three counties to take care of.”

The strike grew to include hundreds of drivers, mechanics and other Teamster members who refused to cross picket lines in areas including Medina and western Cuyahoga counties.

Reduced manpower led to delayed pickup schedules in communities across the county, which in turn led to garbage collection this weekend in an effort to get caught up, according to Kidder.

In Lorain, Mayor Chase Ritenauer and other city officials joined city workers again Saturday who rode three trash trucks borrowed from Elyria to supplement Lorain’s front-end loaders and four dump trucks that focused on the city’s east side, where trash had not been picked up since Monday night, according to Ritenauer.